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CHAPTER NINETEEN – The Wolves Turn on Their Own
At exactly 8:01 a.m., the file leaked.
First as a whisper.
Then a scream.
Screens lit up across campus — faculty, students, board members. Airdropped PDFs. Blurred screenshots. Recordings. A full breakdown of Project Omega: the manipulation campaign, psychological control strategies, and names.
Names like Luke Bennett.
Names like Emily Hale.
And beneath it all?
A body.
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Tessa Hale's.
Found face-down in the reflecting pool.
Wolves ring gone. Fingernails broken from the struggle.
Lungs full of water.
Dead.
And the Circle?
Exploding.
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Inside the Crestwood boardroom, the elders stared each other down.
"Who leaked this?" barked Professor Whitmore.
"Who let the press in?" demanded Chancellor Voss.
The student leaders were silent — half in shock, half in fear.
Then Dean Marek stepped forward.
"We have a suspect."
He turned, slowly, eyes locking on one person:
Emily Hale.
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Emily was yanked out of her dorm before lunch.
Surrounded by guards, her wrists zip-tied, hair undone, shirt stained with rain and blood. She didn't resist. Not once.
She'd known this was coming.
It had always been coming.
Inside the hall, they called it an "emergency tribunal."
Luke stood on the sidelines.
His face unreadable.
His eyes fixed on hers.
And when they asked her to speak?
She laughed.
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> "You want to know if I leaked the file?" Emily said, voice low and calm.
"No. I didn't. But I should have."
Gasps.
Cameras clicking.
Someone dropped their tablet.
She stepped forward.
> "You call yourselves scholars. Leaders. Visionaries. But you built this place on blackmail, control, and blood money. You made monsters and called it 'education.' And now, you're scared because someone's finally not playing by the rules."
Her voice sharpened.
> "Tessa died because she tried to warn you. I won't do the same."
A beat of silence.
Then Luke spoke. For the first time.
> "She's right."
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Every head turned.
Luke walked to the center of the room, hands in his pockets.
> "You want to know the truth? You made us into this. You raised wolves and expected them to act like lambs."
> "But I'm not afraid of exposure anymore."
> "You want war? I'll give you one."
He pulled out a flash drive — not the leaked one. A newer one. He placed it on the tribunal table.
> "It's got everything. Names. Accounts. Payouts. Death certificates. You destroy her, I release it worldwide. I'm not bluffing."
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Chaos.
Whispers. Screams. The Chancellor fainted. One professor vomited.
And Emily?
She stood there, spine straight, chin lifted — a queen with no crown but all the fire.
Luke walked up to her and pulled the zip-tie free.
"Where are we going?" she whispered.
He met her eyes.
> "To finish what we started."
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That Night…
The Wolves disbanded.
The Circle was officially "dissolved" under investigation.
Crestwood began its slow descent into scandal.
And Emily Hale?
She became something else.
Not a girl.
Not a student.
But a reckoning.
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Somewhere in the archives, Noah Hale ran for his life.
He knew he was next.
Because when Emily and Luke took back the system?
They didn't plan to fix it.
They planned to burn it down.
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